“We have increased our visibility in the areas around schools and playgrounds and ask that the community continue the great job of being vigilant.”

“The Second District was recently alerted to several incidents in which unidentified male subjects were observed watching children.

While we have not had any reported abductions or attempted abductions, we wanted to provide our community with a synopsis of each incident and a description of each subject. We have documented each incident and ask that you immediately report any suspicious person(s) or activity in the community so that the person(s) are identified.

We have increased our visibility in the areas around schools and playgrounds and ask that the community continue the great job of being vigilant.

There have recently been several cases of suspicious behavior around children in DC and an attempted abduction of a child at the Air & Space Museum. Anyone doing this (approaching or photographing young children) is going to attract a lot of attention from law enforcement, parents, and schools, which IMHO is completely justified. If you are observed taking photos of children on a playground or by a school, and you’re not a parent there with your own children, it’s highly likely the area has video monitoring and suspicious behavior is reported to police. This was the case when recent similar incidents happened at my child’s school, and the school had very high quality video of an individual photographing children on the playground, and this was reported to the police, who had a meeting at the school with concerned parents.